Pope calls for renewed study of Bible

■ Laity encouraged to read ■ Pontiff appeals for training ■ Sacred Scripture placed at
Scripture before Confession of male and female Readers the heart of liturgical reforms
BY ANNA ARCO
POPE BENEDICT XVI has released the most significant Church document on Scripture since the Second Vatican Council.
Almost three years after the world’s bishops met in Rome for the Synod on Scripture, Pope Benedict published the Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, using the Synod’s findings to lay out Catholic teaching on Scripture.
In the 200-word document the Pope called for Scripture to be at the heart of the Church. He said it was the Church’s “gift and inescapable duty to communicate that joy, born of an encounter with the person of Christ, the Word of God in our midst”.
The Church’s greatest priority, he said, was “to enable the people of our time once more to encounter God, the God who speaks to us and shares his love so that we might have life in abundance”.
He said: “With the Synod Fathers I express my heartfelt hope for the flowering of ‘a new season of greater love for sacred Scripture on the part of every member of the People of God, so that their prayerful and faith-filled reading of the Bible will, with time, deepen their personal relationship with Jesus’.” Verbum Domini is the first papal document on Scripture since Divino afflante Spiritu, issued by Pope Pius XII in 1943, and contains a number of suggestions and recommendations concerning Scripture in the life of the Church. It was published on the Memorial of St Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin.
The Pope recommended that male and female lay Readers should be “truly suitable and carefully trained”. Training should be “biblical and liturgical, as well as technical”, meaning that readers should have “the ability to understand the readings in context and to perceive by the light of faith the central point of the revealed message” as well as “some grasp of the meaning and structure of the Liturgy of the Word and the significance of its connection with the Liturgy of the Eucharist”. The document acknowledges the role of women Readers, who have been active for at least 20 years but are not officially approved by the Church.
Pope Benedict also urged priests to avoid preaching homilies which distract from the Gospel readings and to prepare short sermons for use during weekday Mass. He said: “Generic and abstract homilies which obscure the directness of God’s word should be avoided, as well as useless digressions which risk drawing greater attention to the preacher than to the heart of the Gospel message. The faithful should be able to perceive clearly that the preacher has a compelling desire to present Christ, who must stand at the centre of every homily.” Priests preparing their homi lies should ask themselves: “What are the Scriptures being proclaimed saying? What do they say to me personally? What should I say to the community in the light of its concrete situation?” In Verbum Domini the Pope also recommended the use of “judicious memorisation of some passages which are particularly expressive of the Christian mysteries” for catechetical work. The Pope said: “Catechetical work always entails approaching Scripture in faith and in the Church’s Tradition, so that its words can be perceived as living, just as Christ is alive today wherever two or three are gathered in his name.” The Holy Father also called for wider use of Scripture in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Those preparing for Confession should meditate over passages from Scripture and use prayers based on the Bible during the sacrament.
During the liturgy, the solemn proclamation of the Gospel should be sung wherever possible, the Pope said. In a Church, the ambo , the lectern from which the Gospel is proclaimed, should be in a fixed place and “decorated in aesthetic harmony with the altar, in order to present visibly the theological significance of the double table of the word and of the Eucharist”.
The Pope also warned priests against the practice of reciting poetry and other non-Scriptural texts during the Liturgy of the Word.
Religious communities and parishes should promote the Liturgy of Hours with lay participation, the Pope said, to lead to greater familiarity with the Scriptures. He urged the lay faithful to start praying the Liturgy of the Hours which was made more widely available thanks to the Second Vatican Council.
All the faithful have a responsibility to proclaim the Gospel, the Pope said.
He said: “No believer in Christ can feel dispensed from this responsibility which comes from the fact of our sacramentally belonging to the Body of Christ. A consciousness of this must be revived in every family, parish, community, association and ecclesial movement. The Church, as a mystery of communion, is thus entirely missionary, and everyone, according to his or her proper state in life, is called to give an incisive contribution to the proclamation of Christ.” Priests must have a great personal familiarity with the word of God, the Pope said.
Knowledge of its linguistic and exegetical aspects, while necessary for a priest, is not enough. A priest, he said, “needs to approach the word with a docile and prayerful heart so that it may deeply penetrate his thoughts and feelings and bring about a new outlook in him – ‘the mind of Christ’ ”.
Priests were not the only ones the Pope said needed to be trained. He urged the laity to be trained to “discern God’s will through a familiarity with his word, read and studied in the Church under the guidance of her legitimate pastors. They can receive this training at the school of the great ecclesial spiritualities, all of which are grounded in sacred Scripture”.
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